Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Since China devalued its currency 3 percent, global markets have gone into a tailspin. Why should this be?

After all, 3 percent devaluation in China could be countered by a U.S. tariff of 3 percent on all goods made in China, and the tariff revenue used to cut U.S. corporate taxes.

The crisis in world markets seems related not only to a sinking Chinese economy, but also to what Beijing is saying to the world; i.e., China will save herself first even if it means throwing others out of the life boat.

Disbelievers in New World Order mythology have long recognized that this new China is fiercely nationalistic. Indeed, with Marxism-Leninism dead, nationalism is the Communist Party’s fallback faith.

China has thus kept her currency cheap to hold down imports and keep exports surging. She has run $300 billion trade surpluses at the expense of the Americans. She has demanded technology transfers from firms investing in China and engaged in technology theft.

Disillusioned U.S. executives have been pulling out.

And the stronger China has grown economically, the more bellicose she has become with her neighbors from Japan to Vietnam to the Philippines. Lately, China has laid claim to virtually the entire South China Sea and all its islands and reefs as national territory.

In short, China is becoming a mortal threat to the rules-based global economy Americans have been erecting since the end of the Cold War, even as the U.S. system of alliances erected by Cold War and post-Cold War presidents seems to be unraveling.

Germany, the economic powerhouse of the European Union, was divided until recently on whether Greece should be thrown out of the eurozone. German nationalists have had enough of Club Med.

On issues from mass migrations from the Third World, to deeper political integration of Europe, to the EU’s paltry contributions to a U.S.-led NATO that defends the continent, nationalistic resistance is rising.

Enter the Donald. If there is a single theme behind his message, it would seem to be a call for a New Nationalism or New Patriotism.

He is going to “make America great again.” He is going to build a wall on the border that will make us proud, and Mexico will pay for it.

He will send all illegal aliens home and restore the traditional value of U.S. citizenship by putting an end to the scandal of “anchor babies.”

One never hears Trump discuss the architecture of our rules-based global economy.

Rather, he speaks of Mexico, China and Japan as tough rivals, not “trade partners,” smart antagonists who need to face tough American negotiators who will kick their butts.

They took our jobs and factories; now we are going to take them back. And if that Ford plant stays in Mexico, then Ford will have to climb a 35-percent tariff wall to get its trucks and cars back into the USA.

Trump to Ford: Bring that factory back to Michigan!

To Trump, the world is not Davos; it is the NFL. He is appalled at those mammoth container ships in West Coat ports bringing in Hondas and Toyotas. Those ships should be carrying American cars to Asia.

Asked by adviser Dick Allen for a summation of U.S. policy toward the Soviets, Ronald Reagan said: “We win; they lose.”

That it is not an unfair summation of what Trump is saying about Mexico, Japan and China.

While the economic nationalism here is transparent, Trump also seems to be saying that foreign regimes are freeloading off the U.S. defense budget and U.S. military.

He asks why rich Germans aren’t in the vanguard in the Ukraine crisis. Why do South Koreans, with an economy 40 times that of the North and a population twice as large, need U.S. troops on the DMZ?

“What’s in it for us?” he seems ever to be asking.

He has called Vladimir Putin a Russian patriot and nationalist with whom he can talk. He has not joined the Republican herd that says it will cancel the Iran nuclear deal the day they take office, re-impose U.S. sanctions and renegotiate the deal.

Trump says he would insure that Iran lives up to the terms.

While his foreign policy positions seem unformed, his natural reflex appears nonideological and almost wholly results-oriented. He looks on foreign trade much as did 19th-century Republicans.

They saw America as the emerging world power and Britain as the nation to beat, as China sees us today. Those Americans used tariffs, both to force foreigners to pay to build our country, and to keep British imports at a price disadvantage in the USA.

Then they exploited British free trade policy to ship as much as they could to the British Isles to take down their factories and capture their jobs for U.S. workers, as the Chinese do to us today.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

While perhaps too early for Democratic elites to panic and begin bailing out on Hillary Clinton's campaign as a doomed vessel, they would be well advised not to miss any of the lifeboat drills.

For Hillary's campaign is taking on water at a rate that will sink her, if the leakage does not stop, and soon.

Initially, the issue of Hillary and the emails she sent and received as secretary of state seemed too wonkish, too complex, too trivial a matter to sink a candidacy as strong as hers.

Her nomination was considered as assured as any since Vice President Richard Nixon ran unopposed in 1960.

But since it was revealed that as secretary of state she used a private server for her emails, located in her home in Chappaqua, the bleeding of public trust has been unabated.

Her tortured explanation as to why she installed her own server only raised suspicions. Her erasure of 30,000 "personal emails," her initial refusal to turn her server over to State, her denials she ever received confidential information, her wiping of the server clean, her stonewalling, have all ravaged her reputation for truthfulness. And truthfulness was never Bill or Hillary's long suit.

And the issue of Clintonian entitlement and privilege has arisen again.

For Hillary showed a casualness in handling the nation's secrets that would have cost a civil servant at State, Defense or CIA his or her security clearance and job. And they would be facing charges and potentially jail time.

Indeed, now that Justice and the FBI have been called in to look at Hillary's handling of state secrets, it is not impossible that at the end of this road lies a federal indictment.

Should that happen, her campaign and career would be over. And should that indictment come later rather than sooner, the Democratic Party could be headed into the election of 2016 led by a Brooklyn-born septuagenarian Socialist.

Every day that new revelations come about Hillary and her emails, and every week that passes between now and when the filing deadlines for the primaries begin to fall, this becomes a real possibility.

Again, the problem here for Hillary and the Democratic Party is that the investigators at Justice, the FBI, and in a hostile Congress and the media, are far from wrapping this up.

They all have their teeth in it, and they are not going away. And there is nothing Hillary can do to halt the investigations, or plug the leaks, or, it seems, to change the subject.

What, really, is the relevance of her $350 billion plan to get the super-rich to pay off student loans, if Hillary is being lawyered up?

The Democratic Party is approaching the fail-safe point.

If it appears that Hillary is headed for the knacker's yard, then to whom do the Democratic elites turn, and, equally important, when do they move?

For they cannot wait too long.

Hence, a "Draft Biden" movement has begun, and veterans of President Obama's campaigns are signing on.

Yet the vice president should think long and hard about whether and when he plunges into the Democratic race. For his announcement of availability would be a signal that Joe Biden thinks Hillary is politically dead, or close to it, and he is coming in to drop the hammer.

This would be seen as act of crass political opportunism, seizing upon Hillary's travails, shouldering her aside, and seizing a nomination millions of Democrats have long believed was hers by right.

How would the millions of Democratic women who have looked forward to the first woman president respond to Biden's barreling in and finishing her off? How enthusiastic would those women and feminists be for a Candidate Biden who had delivered the deathblow to Hillary and blocked for another decade any chance of a woman as president?

Joe would certainly be up for Chauvinist of the Year 2015.

And other problems would arise for a Biden candidacy.

Would Bill and Hillary Clinton be out there stumping to help Joe win the presidency, when both had dreamed of her having it?

Joe would have to beat Bernie Sanders and rout the Elizabeth Warren liberals. He would have to woo back the big contributors in the Jewish community who believe Barack Obama and John Kerry threw Israel and Bibi under the bus to cut a deal that empowers the world's leading "state sponsor of terrorism."

If Joe is having second thoughts about getting in, who can blame him?

As the old saw goes, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

But for Democrats, such counsel comes too late. Hillary is carrying their basket of eggs, and slipping all over the sidewalk.

If they procrastinate in designating someone else to catch the basket if it falls, they get Bernie. But if they move too soon, they will be charged with sabotaging the last best chance for America to elect a woman president.

A nice problem for those ubiquitous cable TV talking heads who identify themselves as "Democratic strategists."

How much is going to family of Kathryn Steinle? Nothing, Nada. To the Chattanooga Servicemen families? Zippo, Zilch, Zero from this mysterious government "fund". So like it or not, we are paying $29,000,000 to these people and the only reason I can see is that they are black. (and NO, my liberal friends, that's not a racist comment; it's just a fact)!!!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Justice Department will fast track the sending of $29 million to South Carolina to help families of victims of the mass murder of nine churchgoers at a historic black church in Charleston, a Justice Department spokesman said on Friday.

An unspecified portion of the money, allocated under the government's national Crime Victim Assistance Formula Grant program, can be used to provide services to the families of victims of the shootings at Emmanuel AME Church, spokesman Kevin Lewis said.